Afterward, Klein experienced the uneasiness likely to be in-duced by a skeptic’s first-time encounter with advanced intuitive abilities. “My article, and even Helen Palmer aside,” the reporter mused, “what did it mean if images of everyone were continually available to anyone all over the world?”

Since the late 1980s, Helen Palmer has largely curtailed her psychic readings to teach intuitive arts and lead seminars based on the Enneagram, an increasingly popular model of human behavior. The Enneagram (see the Sense & Spirituality Report “What’s Your Number?”) outlines the different ways in which nine basic per-sonality types see and interact with the world. Palmer explains that each type’s chief concern or “fixation” determines the way they ex-perience intuition.

Having served on the graduate faculty in psychology at northern California’s John F. Kennedy University, Palmer is cur-rently co-director, with Dr. David Daniels, of the Trifold School of Enneagram Studies that offers training and certification programs internationally. Because she believes that intuition is a universal and trainable aspect of human intelligence, Palmer insists on the neces-sity of real-world verification of intuitive insights. Preferring to be called an “intuitive person” rather than a psychic, she exemplifies an articulate, clear-headed approach to inner capacities that most people—including many so-called psychics—treat as mystical or conveniently indefinable.

What is your definition of intuition?

palmer: Intuition is a way of knowing that’s entirely different from rational or linear thought—a special and trainable state of mind that gives access to an extraordinary range of information through vi-sionary impressions, or empathetic feelings, or gut sensations.